Summary: A Case of Administrative Silence – No Response to Our Request

Request sent to Common register portal of the German Federal States (Click here)
Outcome of request Administrative silence (Deadline for responding is 30 calendar days).
Time taken to respond N/A
Reason for refusal
 N/A

 

The request was sent on 31 October 2013 to the Common Register Portal of the German Federal States and the response was received on 29 November, which included an apology for the delayed answer, despite the fact that the deadline for responding to access to information requests in Germany is actually 30 calendar days.

We were told that our email had been forwarded to the Ministry of Justice in Düsseldorf for processing, but when we wrote back to them to ask when the deadline for their response would be, we never got a reply. Access Info has therefore classified this request as a case of Administrative Silence.

February 2015: Access Info Europe and our partners at OCCRP are now working together with pro bono lawyers at Morrison & Foerster and the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice to analyze local laws and regulations affecting the availability of this information. We will use this analysis to determine what options are available to us for obtaining the requested information.

Accessing the German Company Register

Information Available (for free) Company name, registered office, legal status, name of documents available, capital, date of entry, and address.
Provision for public access You can search through the data available in the Register of the Federal States, but you can only use the following search criteria:

  • type of register
  • register number
  • register court
  • company or keywords

You cannot do a blank search.
You need to pay for hard copies of the files, and can request the current copy, a historic copy, or a chronological print-out.
Cost per record 4.50 euro per full record of the registry.
1.50 euro per document retrieved.
Cost for whole database
 You register as a user, make queries and then are billed at the end of the month, depending on what you looked at. You cannot get bulk access.

 

Additional Information:
Germany´s Right to Information (RTI) Rating (Click here)
Germany´s Freedom of Information Act (Click here)
Germany’s company register (Click here)